Arizona’s Governor Jan Brewer has just signed a bill that bans ethnic studies classes in public schools and charter schools, with specific attention being paid to the Tucson public schools, which have a Chicano Studies course, that many claim has promoted discontent and anger among students who have taken the course.
The law actually bans ANY ethnic studies courses, meaning including African American, Asian American, Native American–and by extension–Jewish and Women and Gay Studies courses, which would also be covered under the ban by extension! 🙁
If all of the above groups were covered fairly and comprehensively in American History courses below the college level, then one could possibly understand the reasoning behind the legislation, although it is still censorship!
But as it is, the public school curriculum around the nation lacks the ability to even cover the basic facts and concepts of American history! It is, therefore, outrageous to promote the banning of coverage of the various groups in American society who have been denied equality and justice throughout most of the nation’s history!
This is clearly a right wing attempt to promote distortion, and it now makes Arizona similar to Texas, where the entire history curriculum is being politicized and distorted to teach a conservative oriented, narrow minded view of our national history!
The biggest loser in both Texas and Arizona are Mexican Americans and other Latinos, and yet, as stated many times, the future of the nation is the reality that people of Spanish descent will become, more and more, the largest minority group in America, as in fact, they already are!
Of all ethnic groups that have made up the American nation, only those of German ethnicity have rivaled the numbers who are of Mexican heritage. So the future is here, and the nation needs to learn to deal with it! People of Latino heritage, whether Mexican or other Spanish speaking nations, will not sit back and allow continued discrimination and denial of their history!
All that this outrageous legislation does is promote racism, hatred, and ignorance! It must be appealed by law suits, and Arizona should be ashamed of itself, as it continues down the road of being the inheritor of the racism of Mississippi and Alabama in the 1960s!
In the present, it represents more a state, such as South Carolina or Texas, in its disgraceful state government actions! This demonstrates the danger of states rights, which many conservatives still claim to be existent, although in reality states rights as a legitimate concept was settled by the Civil War, like it or not! 🙁